


Late Bloomer

by SweetPollyOliver



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Closeted Character, HIV/AIDS Crisis, Internalized Homophobia, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, One Shot, Period-Typical Homophobia, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27134044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetPollyOliver/pseuds/SweetPollyOliver
Summary: In California, in June, Johnny Lawrence was already training for his first All Valley Under-18 Tournament. At the same time, the CDC published an article in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report titledPneumocystisPneumonia --- Los Angeles. Five previously healthy young men were treated for pneumonia in five different LA hospitals. Two of them died.Daniel LaRusso was still in Jersey, innocent of these facts and the way they would shape his future.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 22
Kudos: 97





	Late Bloomer

**Author's Note:**

> TW for the AIDS crisis and internalised homophobia/struggling with sexuality and references to period-typical homophobia

**2018**  


Seeing Johnny Lawrence after 34 years, Daniel felt light. Felt giddy, almost. He couldn’t help ribbing him a little about his ‘84 win, figuring he could take it, he’d been a good sportsman about it at the time for all their differences before the tournament. He could help offering to fix his car for free even less. 

He didn’t know this yet, but Johnny would, in due course, make him regret so much as going over to him. But for now it felt monumental just to stand next to this guy again. See the crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes and his still blonde hair. It was only half way through telling Amanda about it later that he started to feel a sinking feeling in his stomach as he saw her arch look. 

“Careful, Daniel, I’ll get jealous,” she said and he laughed hollowly. 

**1981**

In California, in June, Johnny Lawrence was already training for his first All Valley Under-18 Tournament. At the same time, the CDC published an article in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report titled _Pneumocystis_ Pneumonia --- Los Angeles. Five previously healthy young men were treated for pneumonia in five different LA hospitals. Two of them died.

Daniel LaRusso was still in Jersey, innocent of these facts and the way they would shape his future. 

**1979**

Looking back, he thought that he hadn’t put it together, that gay wasn’t just a bad word bullies hissed at you in P.E., until he started hearing about AIDS. Gay cancer, they called it at first. But then he did the math and looked at some timelines online and he realised that wasn’t quite right. He’d been ten. He vividly remembered being ten, but at that age not only was he not following the news, but there wouldn’t have been anything for the news to report about on that particular topic. Not yet. 

He came home spitting mad, kicking cabinet doors and crying and his mom had (after clipping his ear for kicking her cabinets) asked him what was wrong. 

“Those rotten ass- those jerks won’t stop calling me gay,” he said, with a wobbling lower lip and eyes brimming over with tears. 

His mom laughed. 

“Well, do you like boys?” she asked, as though it was a ridiculous question. 

“What?” he asked in return, taken aback.

“Do you like boys the way girls like boys?” she asked him again, hands on her hips. 

“What? No!” he put his hands over his ears. He snatched them down. “You can do that? Why?”

“That’s what gay means,” his mom said. “If you don’t like boys then you’re not gay. Who cares what those little jerks say?”

It seemed very easy for her to say that when she wasn’t the one who no one would leave alone, when he couldn’t go a day without the word ringing in his head. Gay, gay, gay, gay. Even if they didn’t know what they were talking about it still hurt. 

Another, smaller voice in his head said, ‘what if they’re right?’ He squashed it down instantly.

**1985**  


Sitting waiting for his name to be called at graduation, Daniel couldn’t stop fidgeting and shifting in his seat. In the seat next to him, Johnny Lawrence huffed a sigh and put a hand on his shoulder and shook him lightly. Daniel turned to look at him. In profile (from face on, from behind, from anywhere) he looked like a goddamn movie star. Like a blonde Rock Hudson.

“Relax,” he said in a tight voice. “You’re making _me_ nervous.”

For a second, the hand on his shoulder was grounding, centring. Then a spike of anxiety flared up and he shook it off. 

“I am relaxed,” he lied.

Next month, when Daniel was in Okinawa, Rock Hudson would announce that he had AIDS. In October, he would die. 

**1984**  


He had nightmares. It wasn't a big deal, he wasn't a baby. They were just bad dreams. Dreams he woke up from shaking and soaking wet with sweat like he pissed the bed. His dreams were all mixed up amalgams of the worries he had during the day. He dreamt about getting beat up, about needing a blood transfusion, about dirty needles, about dirty thoughts. More than once he had stupid, mixed up dreams where he was kissing Ali, but then she turned into Johnny Lawrence, pulling back from him with his face twisted in a cruel smile. 

He woke up from a dream like that and shuffled into the kitchen, his mom reading the New York Times. 

“Did you hear they think you can get it from saliva now?” his mom was saying, eyes glued to the text in front of her. 

He didn’t have to ask what ‘it’ was.

It would be another two years before it was proven that HIV could not be contracted through saliva, but by then dreaming about kissing Johnny Lawrence already felt dangerous. 

**1994**  


That goddamn Tom Hanks movie pissed him off. Must be nice to get a bunch of awards for pretending to be sick, pretending to be gay. The two still felt synonymous--not because- he wasn’t conservative, he didn’t think it was a _sin_ , but he did start having these feelings at a time when it seemed like everyone who did got sick and everyone who got sick died. Everyone was still dying--it wouldn’t be until ‘96 when things started turning around. 

It came and it went. The feelings. By this time, it was clearly not some mixed up Freudian thing with Johnny Lawrence in particular where violence and sex got confused, but he wasn’t convinced that this wasn’t just a thing that everyone dealt with to some extent. It felt so… normal to follow a guy with his eyes, check out the cut of his body along with his clothes, think about brushing the hair out of his eyes. But it didn’t feel like it was _him_. It was just an urge, like wanting to throw your car keys off a bridge or scream in public. It wasn't real. 

Besides, even if it were… well, it wasn't real. 

**1979**  


He didn’t complain about bullies calling him names anymore, calling him _gay_ , but he couldn’t help but ask one question of his mother. 

“Would you care? If I did like boys?”

His mother got a serious look on her face and smoothed down his hair with his hands.

“Of course,” she said and his heart twisted. “Not because there’s anything wrong with it, but it’s just such a hard life. It would break my heart if you had to fight that battle, honey.”

He didn’t ask her again.

**2002**  


Homophobia. The thing about phobias is they’re irrational. Maybe they start out being about something real, but eventually the panic response becomes hard wired and you can’t logic your way out of it. Or so said Amanda, who minored in psych. She told him about a study where the researchers conditioned a little boy to be afraid of his own pet rat. It got so generalised that he would freak out if he was shown a fluffy scarf the same colour rolled up in a ball, the same approximate shape as a rat. 

It made sense to him. He had to work not to flinch when he saw two men together sometimes. When he saw the approximate shape of what his life could have been. 

**2019**  


He was sixteen before he kissed a girl. Pretty late bloomer. 

He was 51 when he kissed a man. Well. Was kissed by a man.

He pulled back suddenly. 

“What the hell, Johnny?” he asked. 

“Sorry,” the other man said, not sounding very sorry at all. “I guess I got some wires crossed. I thought that’s where we were headed.”

“Do you even like men?” Daniel asked. “Or is this some kind of macho power move I’m too sissy to understand?”

“Not sissy enough,” Johnny sighed and put his hands in his pockets. “Daniel, it’s fine. I thought you wanted me to, I made a mistake, let’s move on.”

“But do you? Like men?” Daniel asked again.

“Yeah, obviously,” Johnny said caustically. “A babe’s a babe.”

He saw red. He was furious that this guy, this _fucking_ guy, got to be a chill 21st century bisexual and say shit like ‘a babe’s a babe’ and lay one on him when he had been keeping his shit under lock and key for decades. 

“A babe’s a babe?” he repeated sarcastically.

“Don’t get conceited, Danielle,” Johnny rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you’re a regulation hottie, what’s the big deal?” 

Daniel crushed their lips together and ignored the way his chest seized.

*

Later, Johnny woke up to find him crying next to him in the bed and shuffled closer. 

“Who the hell does this?” he asked him between cracked, stuttering breaths. “I skip out on the hard shit and go straight to standing on the LaRusso Auto float at Pride acting like I know what the hell it’s like? I- I never-”

“Daniel,” Johnny interrupted him with a hand on his shoulder. It felt grounding, centring and dangerous all at once. “I really don’t think you skipped out on the hard shit.” 

He tucked his face into Johnny Lawrence’s neck and sobbed. Johnny held him.

**Author's Note:**

> Credit where credit is due, the idea of Johnny Lawrence summing his sexuality up as 'a babe's a babe' is the intellectual property of thenewgothicromance.
> 
> N.B. I do not represent Johnny as being more at peace with his sexuality specifically because he's bi rather than gay. The AIDS crisis was an incredibly traumatising time to be a bisexual man just as much as it was to be a gay man.


End file.
